OK, today Sally Morgan won a reported £125,000 damages from The Daily Mail in an out of court settlement. Those people who have said “The UK courts have endorsed psychic powerz!” are more out of touch than the wackiest woo-filled spoonbender — people the clue is in the “out of”!?! The settlement simply shows that what the Mail alleged about the facts on a certain occasion were untrue, or could not be shown to be true, and I suspect the actual bone of contention was the claim Sally wore an earpiece. Now if you have no idea what any of this is about, firstly go read the Guardian piece on the libel result. Then come back, and I’ll make it more interesting 🙂

The libel case appears directly related to the RTE radio broadcast and the accusations made on that day. Given it could have gone to court, and Sue and Dorrie could have testified, as I understand they made contact with Simon Singh – or did I get the wrong end of a Twitter stick here – why did the Mail settle out of court? I actually don’t get it at all, unless there was substantial doubt that the witnesses were correct and the earpiece ploy was in use. Maybe Stuart McKeown and Mick Skelly were willing to testify? I have been uncertain about the claims since the start, and have expressed my reasons for caution. I’m not sure if we ever get tot the bottom of this now, and I am no closer to believing Sally is psychic, but not much more convinced than I was she is a conscious fraud either. I wish she would just do some actual tests: not Randi’s challenge, I mean something with Tricia Robertson and PRISM or the SPR.

So far I have not really libelled Sally Morgan, and the truth is I have no intention of doing so, but now Hitler enters our story, along with Derek Acorah (OK, not physically, though “Hitler, Acorah, and Morgan walked in to a bar…” could be the start of the second most unfunny joke in history. In 1939 Hitler could have saved us from the endless pain of the most unfunny joke in history. And he tried, he tried.

Now physical humour can be repetitive.

That is still mildly amusing: however this isn’t. Last week Derek Acorah cancelled a show in a Scottish theatre, and rescheduled the venue, and the management put out the most tired, most unfunny joke I know “Psychic cancels show owing to unforeseen circumstances”. Today pretty much every paper has had some “should have seen it coming” psychic joke, as have half the users on Twitter – the half not too busy frothing over Bieber to know Sally Morgan exists.

I hear a lot of righteous cant about sick psychics preying on the bereaved: folks you are missing the real problem. If only these folks would turn some of that indignant anger to hunting down people writing shite headlines like this with “seen it coming… psychic” and dealing with them as they deserve! These are villains who are fully deserving of adding to the sum total of bereavement by being hastily despatched. “Kill them all: Acorah conjure up his own!” to update Arnaud de Amaury’s famous words.

Why is this joke so bad? Because psychics are not mediums, (unless like Acorah they call themselves “psychic mediums”) and purported mediums like Sally Morgan are not supposed to be able to predict the future.

And that bit is actually Hitler’s fault….

In September 1939 Spiritualist circles all over Britain and America were predicting that despite the growing international crisis, war would be averted, and Hitler would back down. And guess what? He did, and a golden age of peace— oh no, sorry he invaded Poland and France and England promptly declared war plunging us in to World War 2.

This led to a bit of a theological crisis for Spiritualism. The spirits had spoken, at length, in detail, about “peace in our time”. They had been shown to be completely wrong, as wicked old Hitler had carried on exactly as he wanted and ignored their prophecies. In the UK both Two Worlds and Psychic News debated the issue, and eventually a new doctrine came forth – that Spirit has no certain knowledge of the future. So mediums are not fortune tellers, and are not able to predict what will happen to you.

Now one day I will write up a little history of Spiritualism, Spiritism, the Christian Spiritualists and all the other groups and denominations. I’m not a spiritualist, I don’t approve of mediumship and I am generalising wildly, and I do not know exactly what type of medium Sally Morgan is. Furthermore, a recent statement has started to revise things back a bit —

An inhabitant of the Spirit World can, to a degree, predict future events with greater or less accuracy, according to conditions. This is done by reasoning based on observation of past and present conditions and events, and is more accurate than is the same process as used by us, because the Spirit reasoner is not hampered by a physical body, nor by the conventional and set ideas that go with the limitations of such a body — National Association of Spiritualist Churches

So they can’t actually see the future, just make a better guess than us, based on current conditions. That is really not very exciting, but it is a lot further than some late C20th mediums would go.

Finally a little whine. The people talking about Sally Morgan on Twitter are generally not, with the obvious exceptions of Prof Chris French or Ciaran O’Keeffe (or Tricia Robertson if she uses Twitter) knowledgeable about testing psychics. They do not know the literature, have never read Robertson & Roy, and certainly have no idea of the wider issues. They don’t invoke Flew or Braude against personal survival of death – they say “it can’t happen because it’s rubbish”. This strikes me as the most dangerous fundamentalism of them all – when individuals decide all of their own unexamined beliefs are simply true, and use that naive world-view as a way to just say Sally is a fraud. I’m not convinced by her, but you need to do a lot better than this. Sure I’m an arrogant elitist tosspot who wants you to read books, do experiments and test and critically examine claims. I’m a real wanker in your eyes I’m sure to insult your fond fundamentalism like this – yet I am also a real sceptic. If you are going to be a champion of science, rationality and warrior against woo take the time and effort to learn the facts and major issues in the field. Otherwise you are just another frothing fundie, albeit from a denomination of just one! So go read up a bit on all the issues. Here is a good place to start – Jensen & Cardena testing a professional medium (who failed the test) — great bibliography, free access. http://ejp.wyrdwise.com/EJP%20v24-1.pdf

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About Chris Jensen Romer

I am a profoundly dull, tedious and irritable individual. I have no friends apart from two equally ill mannered cats, and a lunatic kitten. I am a ghosthunter by profession, and professional cat herder. I write stuff and do TV things and play games. It's better than being real I find.

I think you’re being a tad over-sensitive when you describe the joke, ‘Psychic cancels show owing to unforeseen circumstances’ as ‘unfunny’, unless, of course, all you mean is that you, personally, don’t find it funny. I suggest that the epithet ‘unfunny’ is usually reserved for jokes which are obscene or positively hurtful.

A comparable example might be that of the evangelical Christians whose mission tent was damaged in a gale, and whose insurers declined to pay on the grounds that it was ‘an act of God’. In reality, there may be nothing in their theology which leads them to expect God to give special protection to mission tents, but that, surely, is not a reason for declaring that the joke is unfunny – though, admittedly, it might be a reason for an earnest evangelical not being much amused by it.

Surely, you are making a serious misjudgment when you (apparently) suggest that retailing a joke of this kind is morally equivalent to a fraudulent medium exploiting bereaved people.